Search form

Search form

Allowing state pharmacy boards to oversee pharmacy benefit managers creates a conflict of interest and is outside the scope of the boards' appropriate authority, says Ed Buthusiem, a director at Berkeley Research Group. Pharmacy boards should regulate pharmacists, not competitors, Buthusiem said. "It is a conflict of interest to be regulated by those with whom PBMs contract, those who negotiate their payments. It would open up a hornet's nest," added PCMA President and CEO Mark Merritt. In addition, the Federal Trade Commission says such provisions could ease collusion, raising prescription drug prices.

Related Summaries

A proposed bill before the Oklahoma Senate Business and Commerce Committee would grant the state pharmacy board authority to oversee pharmacy benefit managers. If passed, the bill would create a conflict of interest for pharmacists on the board, who compete with pharmacy benefit managers, critics say. "What you are doing is creating a financial conflict of interest, granting them regulatory power over those with whom they contract," said Charles Coté, vice president of strategic communications at the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association.

State pharmacy boards, whose members include pharmacists, have an inherent conflict of interest in regulating and overseeing the thousands of pharmacies nationwide that combine, mix or alter prescription drugs, health care attorney William G. Schiffbauer writes. Pharmacy boards have further overreached their role of self-regulating pharmacists in claiming authority to regulate pharmacy benefit managers, with whom they are often in competition, Schiffbauer adds. State pharmacy boards' authority should be limited to regulating the behavior and competence of pharmacists, finding and disciplining problem pharmacists and handling conflicts of interest in the pharmacy profession, Schiffbauer writes.

Texas Medicaid is moving to a competitive pharmacy program, transitioning from fee-for-service. "Medicaid, unfortunately, has been stuck in the old fee-for-service mode where political people in the state government get lobbied to pay higher and higher dispensing rates," said Pharmaceutical Care Management Association President and CEO Mark Merritt. "Too often they oblige and give dramatically inflated dispensing rates based on politics and advice from the drugstore lobby."